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Friday, 3 August 2018

“EVEL” PROVED NOT TO BE EVIL BUT MERELY USELESS!

“EVEL” PROVED NOT TO BE EVIL BUT
MERELY USELESS!

Remember
when David Cameron’s announced in Downing Street, after the Scottish Referendum,
that he thought that we now needed to give a voice to England? He proposed that the voting system in the
House of Commons should be reformed to provide English votes for English laws
("EVEL").

Labour
howled that this would lead to disaster but our view was just that it wouldn’t
prove to be an answer to the English Question.
In particular we thought then it wouldn’t even be an attempted answer to
the question of how the Executive operates.
This is because there would be no English First Minister or English
Government or even a Secretary of State for England!

Also
it was always going to be unlikely that any such minor reforms to the House of
Commons would change the fact that the people that get elected as Labour MPs or
Conservative MPs are usually people who not only don’t care for England and do
not identify themselves as being English.
In fact they often outright hate England! For an example of this consider the infamous
words of the former Leader of the Liberal Democrats, the late Charles Kennedy,
who said that he supported the Regionalisation of England because
Regionalisation “Was calling into
question the very idea of England itself”!

We
thought how is it going to be possible for such people to ever give a proper
voice to England?

The
extracts of the study that I particularly relished in their vindication of the
English Democrats’ positions were as follows:-

“In
the light of prime minister David Cameron’s assertion in September 2014 that
EVEL would constitute a ‘decisive answer’ to the West Lothian Question that
would enable the ‘voices of England [to] be heard’ (Cameron, 2014), and
given the level of disagreement which these procedures have elicited at
Westminster, the effectiveness and implications of this historic reform demand
more careful assessment than they have hitherto received.”

“More
significant objections to EVEL, however, concerned its potential constitutional
implications. Some contended that this kind of reform would be inherently
incompatible with the ethos of a body tasked with managing the legislative
affairs of the UK as a whole, by creating different classes of MPs with
different rights. As Bryant (2008, p. 674) noted, ‘[t]he
standard objection to it is that it would create two classes of MPs … and in so
doing it would run counter to the sovereignty of parliament exercised equally
by all who are elected to it’.”

“For others, however, devolution to some parts of the UK, but
not to England, has embedded an endemic unfairness and helped put the English
Question back at the heart of British politics—a view that has been loudly championed
by proponents of the idea of an English parliament.”

“With respect to the various practical obstacles that have
been feared by sceptics, the evidence derived from the 2015–2017 parliament
suggests that these pessimistic predictions have not thus far been realised.”

“We nevertheless found little evidence that the Commons
authorities were unduly burdened in this period by the requirement to make
adjudications. This is an important observation because it tends to undermine
the common claim that it is not practical to identify England-only legislation.”

“The worry that EVEL might create ‘two classes’ of MPs was
widely echoed in the debate about these procedures which took place in the
House during 2015, and this became a standard complaint among some MPs—particularly
on the question of the so-called ‘Barnett consequentials’ of legislation that
appeared mainly to affect England. During these debates it was argued that the
new procedures would establish ‘two classes of Members of Parliament’,
‘second-class MPs’, or even make some MPs ‘fourth-class’. This
complaint also figured in a wider public debate about EVEL which took place in
Scotland in 2015, and in a much more limited way in England.”

“The
government possesses various mechanisms within the pre-existing procedures of
the House of Commons to manage legislative business, including control over
parliamentary time and the exclusive power to initiate taxation and spending
provisions. Such tools mean that the possibility of an opposition party with a
majority in England effectively displacing the UK government on England-only
matters remains remote, at least as a direct consequence of these procedures.”

“It remains possible for
England-only legislation not to be certified under EVEL. This is illustrated by
government proposals to relax Sunday trading rules through the Enterprise Bill
in 2016. Although this policy would only have applied in England and Wales, the
Speaker’s provisional certificate confirmed that it did not meet the
certification tests. This was because the
relevant clause also contained material relating to employment rights in
Scotland.

Under EVEL, however, whole clauses are considered for certification,
not components within them. This episode demonstrates rather well that, should
ministers in future wish to circumvent the veto right provided by EVEL, there
is every chance that this could be relatively easily achieved through the
‘tactical’ drafting of legislation.”

“Under EVEL, the backing of
the UK-wide House remains necessary even if it is no
longer sufficient for legislation to pass. This means that
English MPs remain unable to force through legislation against the wishes of
UK-wide MPs—a situation that in time may prove unacceptable to some MPs and
wider English audiences.”

“This feature can be
illuminated through reference to two different controversies that arose during
the 2015–2017 parliament. In July 2015, the government laid before the Commons
secondary legislation to relax the rules governing fox-hunting in England and
Wales.But a scheduled vote to approve this change was
abandoned after the Scottish National Party indicated that it would vote with
Conservative backbenchers and others against the move, making a government
defeat much more likely.”

“Subsequently, the provision
to relax Sunday trading rules in England and Wales was deleted from the
Enterprise Bill in a government defeat at Commons report stage. This policy
achieved the backing of MPs in England and Wales, but it was MPs representing
Scottish constituencies (where it would not directly have applied) who
ultimately proved decisive”

“To clarify the extent
to which EVEL does, and does not, answer the West Lothian anomaly on
legislative voting, it is helpful to compare it to the devolved legislatures,
and, specifically, to distinguish between two different ways in which these
devolved bodies approve legislation in policy areas that are within their
competence. The first, and most common, mechanism is for legislation to be
introduced into the relevant devolved legislature, where it is scrutinised and
voted on by representatives elected from that part of the UK. But an
alternative mechanism that has been developed is for the legislation to be
passed by the UK-level Westminster parliament, but with the expressed consent
of the appropriate devolved legislature under the operation of the ‘Sewel
convention’. EVEL has been designed to be, in some ways, analogous to the
second of these mechanisms, but not the first. Consequently, English MPs remain
unable to force through legislation against objections from non-English
representatives and are thus in a ‘weaker’ position than their devolved
counterparts."

“Moreover, legislative
voting is only one component of parliamentary activity, and Dalyell’s query is
also potentially relevant to these other functions. In the Westminster
parliament, these include the opportunity to hold debates, question ministers
and conduct formal inquiries—functions which are also mirrored within the
devolved legislatures. These can be understood as mechanisms enabling the
expression of ‘voice’, rather than simply the right to ‘veto’ proposed
legislation. While these tools clearly can be, and are, used by English MPs at
Westminster on policy matters that in practice relate only to England, they are
not badged, or even acknowledged, as being territorially bounded in this way.

David Cameron, as
quoted in the introduction above, argued that EVEL would enable England’s voice
to be better heard within the UK legislature. Subsequently, his party’s 2015
English manifesto claimed that the reform would enable ‘English MPs to express
their voice on matters affecting England only’ (Conservative Party, 2015, p.
8). Yet it is far from clear that EVEL offers any notable enhancement of the
expressive and deliberative power of English MPs, or gives more voice to
England in any meaningful sense.

More generally, there is a palpable sense that
the newly established legislative grand committees have failed to provide a
discernible English dimension to the legislative process or promote a clearer
English voice.”

“During EVEL’s first
year in operation, most of the legislative grand committees were entirely
perfunctory, with few or no substantive contributions being made.”

“The failure of EVEL
to facilitate any meaningful English voice also illustrates the dangers that
can arise when different arguments for reform are conflated. There is a risk
that ministers have ‘over-claimed’ in talking up what this kind of reform can
achieve, and this could well lead to problems of expectation management in the
future. As one MP opposed to the procedures told us, ‘any political advantage
the government have got by doing this will be dissipated pretty quickly once
people realise just how insignificant a measure it actually is. It just tackles
one tiny part of the English Question.’”

“On the larger
question of whether these procedures provide a meaningful form of English
representation at Westminster, our research leads us to a more sceptical
response. EVEL has not eliminated the basic territorial anomaly associated with
legislative voting in the House of Commons, which has been exacerbated by
devolution. Nor has this new system managed to provide a more visible kind of
symbolic representation for the English. In this sense, despite the
considerable energy expended on these changes and the inconvenience they have
caused for parliament and government alike, it is not clear that they have
fundamentally changed the rules of the legislative game along the lines
anticipated by their supporters.”